Poem: "Ozymandias," Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

The statue at the British Museum that inspired the competition. (Wikimedia)

In 1818, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this poem in competition with another poet, Horace Smith, to see who could write the best poem about a figure of Ramesses II (also called Ozymandias) that had just been purchased by the British Museum. It is one of the English language's best-known poems.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

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SOME WORDS:

• antique: in this case, ancient
• boundless: without limits
• pedestal: the statue's base
• stamped: carved
• trunkless: without a body
• visage: face
• ye: an old-fashioned way to say "you"

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QUESTION

What do you think Shelley is trying to teach us in this poem?